


Like This Before

by poisonivory



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse, Justice League International (Comic)
Genre: Christmas, Hannukah, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/pseuds/poisonivory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DCnU. Booster Gold is a gloryhound, an egomaniac, and probably a con artist. So when he says he and Ted used to be best friends, why does Ted want to believe him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like This Before

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 Winter Boostlethon. Thanks to queenitsy and mizzmarvel for the beta!

Ted Kord was having a weird day.

The weirdness had started when he’d gotten his morning coffee. The street had been quiet when he’d gone into the Sundollars across the street from his office, but the barista had no sooner handed him his coffee when the screaming and crashing started outside.

Everyone in Sundollars had run out onto the sidewalk to see what was going on. Ted went with them – and then quickly pushed the woman next to him out of the way as a car door came hurtling by.

“Is it Superman? I thought he was in Metropolis!” someone behind Ted asked.

“No, it’s the Justice League! The real one!” someone else said.

Ted stared. Wheeling about in the sky were five people dressed in black and white and balancing on enormous playing cards. The biggest one, a bald behemoth with an ace of spades on his chest, was holding a canister with the S.T.A.R. Labs logo on it. From the torn wires dangling from the canister, Ted had a feeling these card people weren’t just very unconventional couriers.

He shivered as wind blew past him: cold air on his left side, hot air on his right. A woman-shaped blur of green flame soared into the air on his right, shooting a blast of fire at the nearest card. It caught, and the guy riding it, the one dressed as a king, swore and started swatting at it as the card veered wildly.

On Ted’s left, a woman in blue came sliding in on a ramp of ice and flung a snowball at the woman dressed as a queen. “Please stop!” she called as the queen swerved to avoid it. “Surrender now and we won’t have to hurt you!”

“Don’t waste your breath, Ice!” the green-fire-woman-thing yelled. “And where the hell is Booster?”

Something bright and gold streaked through the sky and landed nimbly on the big bald ace’s playing card. Ted squinted. There was something familiar about this man…

“That’s Booster Gold!” someone behind Ted shouted. Oh, right. Ted had seen him on the news, schmoozing the press about the new UN-sanctioned superhero team. He’d seemed kind of like a toolbox.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Booster Gold told the green woman. He smiled at the ace, a sparkly movie-star grin Ted could see from the street. “I don’t think that belongs to you.”

The ace grunted and swung his free fist at Gold’s head. Gold’s smile didn’t waver – and the ace’s fist bounced off the air a few inches in front of Gold’s face.

“Force field,” Gold said. “Don’t you watch TV? I’m kind of a big deal.” He let the ace swing futilely at him a couple more times. “My turn.”

_Pow!_ Gold’s punch knocked Ace clear off his card, and the canister went flying. Gold leapt after it, catching it and rolling like the world’s flashiest QB. “Gotcha!” he cried, springing back into the air, canister tucked under his arm. “And as for you – ”

He flew after Ace and was just about to grab him when his gaze fell upon Ted. Their eyes met, and Gold’s mouth dropped open. He opened his mouth to say something – 

– and _wham!_ crashed into a street sign, nearly dropping the canister.

“Booster!” the green flame woman shrieked. “What the hell are you doing? We need you!” She and the woman in blue were both fighting off two opponents each, and the ace guy was shaking himself off and getting ready to charge back into the fray.

Gold shook himself as well. “Right,” he said. “Your fearless leader is on his way, Fire!”

“Ugh,” she said, but Ted didn’t get to hear the rest, because the police chose that moment to show up, ushering the crowd inside, where it was relatively safe. The noise outside died down a few minutes later, and Ted and the other civilians in the Sundollars were informed that the Royal Flush Gang had been taken into custody, and that they could go about their days.

Ted rushed back across the street, but he’d already missed one meeting and was late for another. No one seemed too mad, though – when he told them what had happened, everyone had had their own story to tell about a superhero encounter. No matter what your opinion was on these new superheroes, no one was denying that they sure made life more exciting.

That was this morning. Now Ted was sitting in a different Sundollars, trying to relax a little on his lunch break and read the news on his K-Pad.

And a guy two tables away was staring at him.

Ted surreptitiously checked behind him in the reflection of his K-Pad screen, but there was no one there. In fact, there was no one else in the whole Sundollars besides the staff – Ted hadn’t been able to sneak away until three, and the lunch rush was long over. So this guy was definitely staring at him.

He checked his reflection again. No, he hadn’t grown horns or a third eye since shaving this morning. And as far as he knew, he hadn’t gone to high school with this guy, who looked younger than him anyway, or fired him or killed his dog or anything. So why the scrutiny?

Fleetingly, he thought of another reason some dude would be staring at him, but this guy was movie star-level good-looking. He wouldn’t be interested in an Average Joe like Ted.

Movie star-level… Ted bit his lip. Playing a hunch, he pulled up his internet app and ran a quick search for “Booster Gold.” Then he glanced at Mr. Desperately Seeking Theodore again.

Yep. Take away the weird-ass blue and gold visor, and the guy sitting across from him was Booster Gold. Ted thought back to the fight against the Royal Flush Gang, and that moment when Gold had seemed to look at him, and flown into the street sign. At the time, he’d just thought Gold was an idiot. Now he was wondering what was really going on.

He finished his sandwich, crumpled up the plastic wrapper it had come in, and stood up to throw the wrapper away. Gold’s eyes tracked him as he walked over to the trash can and back to his table, and there was something…almost hungry in his expression.

Okay, this was just ridiculous. Ted put his K-Pad in his shoulder bag, gathered up his coffee and coat, and sat down at Gold’s table. Gold’s mouth dropped open.

“Why are you staring at me?” Ted asked.

Gold’s mouth worked silently before he managed to squeak out, “I…I wasn’t.”

Some superhero. “You’ve been staring at me since you got here.”

“I wasn’t!” Gold said, a little more confidently. “You were just…in the direction I happened to be looking.”

Ted raised an eyebrow. Gold looked away. “Yeah, sure. Why are you following me?”

“What, first I’m staring at you, then I’m following you?” Gold asked.

“No, first you followed me from the fight this morning, and then you – ”

“Fight?” Gold interrupted. “What…there was no…what fight? What are you talking about? I don’t…I don’t _fight._ ”

Ted rolled his eyes. “I’m not stupid. You’re Booster Gold!”

“Shh, shh!” Gold hissed, looking around frantically. The kid behind the register didn’t look up from his copy of _High Times_. “Who told you?”

“What do you mean, who told me? I have _eyes_. And all you wear is a visor, anyway.” Well, one thing was for sure – this guy was definitely no threat. Ted was really starting to question the UN’s staffing decisions.

Gold looked over his shoulder again, then leaned in close to Ted. “All right,” he said. “You’re right. I am Booster Gold. And I…” He paused dramatically. “…am from the _future_.”

He looked at Ted expectantly, but since Ted had heard him deliver that exact same line on TV, he was less than impressed. “So I’ve heard. So?”

Now Gold looked slightly at a loss. “So…uh. So I’m…I’m from the future.”

Ted waited.

“And…and when I _saw_ you on the street this morning, I recognized you from…from future money,” Gold went on. “And I knew you were Ted Kord, savior of humanity! The very person I had come back to this time to protect from, um, from the robots!”

“Nice try, buddy,” Ted said. “I saw that movie too. What else you got?”

Gold sighed, deflating a bit, and for the first time all day he looked truly genuine. “Look, Ted, I really am from the future. And as for why I followed you…I can’t…you wouldn’t believe me.”

“What, like it could possibly be more ridiculous than everything you’ve done up to now?” Ted said. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and Gold made a soft, pained sound. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” Gold said. “You just…reminded me of something.”

Ted raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” Gold said. “Okay. Here it is.” He took a deep breath. “I think we’re supposed to be in a different dimension.”

“You’re right,” Ted said. “I don’t believe you.” He picked up his bag and started to rise.

“Wait!” Gold said, grabbing his forearm. His hand was bigger than Ted’s, and Ted could feel the power in it, though Gold’s touch was gentle. “Look, you _know_ different universes are a possibility. It’s basic quantum mechanics! Think about the Everett interpretation, or Erdel’s Principle. Or the Allen Equation – no, he won’t have built the treadmill yet. But the basic principle remains: infinite time, infinite space, infinite possibilities. Fold any one of those axes and you can travel instantaneously along them.”

Ted sank back into his chair. He wouldn’t have guessed this talking hairdo could _spell_ Erdel’s Principle, let alone understand it. “That’s all theoretical.”

“So is unaided flight. And yet...” Gold gestured to himself.

Ted frowned. “Okay. I’m not convinced, but let’s pretend I am. You’re telling me that you’re from the future _and_ another dimension?”

“No. Yes. Not exactly. It’s...” Gold rubbed his forehead, as if he was trying to coax his brain into cooperating. “I’m twenty-one, okay? I remember coming here two years ago, learning about this time period, getting recruited by the UN for the JLI.”

His gaze went distant, like he was focusing on something beyond Ted. “But I also remember coming here sixteen years ago and being recruited for the JLI by a man named Maxwell Lord. I remember being on the League for years, and off it. I remember becoming a Time Master and seeing the beginning and the end of the universe. And then remaking it, over and over again.”

Ted shivered. Maybe Gold was just a really good actor, but something about the way he said that last bit gave Ted a chill.

“But it’s like a dream, you know?” Gold went on. “It was really vivid at first, but over the past few months it’s...I don’t know. Faded. It’s harder to tell the difference between that universe and this one. It’s harder to remember the details. I figured it really _was_ a dream, even if I don’t remember dreaming it.”

His gaze refocused on Ted, sharp and blue. “And then I saw you.”

Ted swallowed. “Me?”

“You’re the biggest difference between that universe and this one,” Gold said. “Fire and Ice and Guy and them, they’re all basically the same. My...my past, and why I came here, and Superman, and the UN... But you, you were all _over_ the dream, right from the start.”

“What, did I ride around on a broomstick threatening your dog?” Ted asked, trying for flippancy. Future Boy was creeping him way the hell out.

“No,” Gold said, smiling faintly. “You were a superhero.”

Ted snorted. “Me? A superhero? Come on. Where are the hidden cameras? Did Murray set this up?”

“I’m telling the truth!” Gold insisted.

“Uh-huh.” Ted sat back in his chair and took a sip of his coffee, cold and bitter now. “You’re a good actor, Mr. Gold. You should look into that if this superhero thing doesn’t pan out.”

“What happened to Dan Garrett, Ted?” Gold asked quietly.

Ted went still. “What?”

Gold just looked at him, waiting.

“You’re an asshole.” Ted stood up, flushed with anger. “I don’t know how you know about that, but I gave my statement to the police years ago and I’m not going through that again for some shiny-assed flyboy who _claims_ to be from the future. Get your jollies somewhere else.”

“Ted, wait, I didn’t mean – ” Gold started, but Ted grabbed his coat and briefcase and stormed out without waiting to hear the rest.

It served him right for even stopping to listen to a ridiculous person’s ridiculous story. Time travel? Alternate dimensions? Booster Gold probably had a bridge he could sell Ted, too.

But if Gold was lying, what was his angle? And how had he known about Dan?

The familiar, sickening feeling of guilt swept over Ted. In the years since Dan’s death, he’d gotten ambushed by it less and less frequently, but now it was hitting him hard, making him regret the sandwich and coffee he’d just had. Despite assurances that it wasn’t his fault from Tracey and Murray and even Dan’s family, he’d never stopped blaming himself for what had happened to Dan.

And now this jackass with his toothpaste-bright smile and perfect hair had the nerve to throw it in his face. Some hero.

But again – how had he _known?_

Ted worried the thought like a dog with a particularly nauseating bone all the way back to his office and through two meetings. When he sat down at his computer, he couldn’t focus on the screen, and his assistant had to literally wave a hand in front of his face to get his attention.

“Sorry, Angie,” he said, blinking rapidly as if that would jump start his brain into behaving. “What’s up?”

“I need your signature here, here, and here,” she said, putting a few pieces of paper down in front of him that he obediently signed, hoping they weren’t deeds to his soul. “You told me to remind you that you have an early meeting tomorrow morning, I need a final answer on which caterer to go with for the holiday party, and, uh...you have a visitor.”

She pointed at the enormous window behind him, the one Ted never had time during the day to stop and look through. Booster Gold was floating outside it.

“Gah!” Ted said, jerking back. “Ugh. Great. Um...go with whichever caterer offers more desserts. That’s all people really want. I’ll deal with...this.”

Angela nodded, looking understandably bemused, and left. Ted got up and opened the window.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I need to explain,” Gold said. “I need you to believe me.”

He looked remarkably like a puppy in a pet store window, forlorn and hopeful all at once. Ted sighed. “Fine. Get in.”

Gold flew in through the open window. “First of all, I’m sorry for bringing up Dan that way,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted to use something not a lot of people would know about to convince you that I _do_ know you. Sort of.”

“How do you even know about Dan?” Ted asked, crossing his arms. “I’m pretty sure working for the UN doesn’t give you to the right to break into police records.”

“I didn’t!” Gold protested. “I know because you _told_ me, in the...the other reality, the dream, whatever. Dan was your archaeology professor, and a friend. You were working for your Uncle Jarvis, and you found out that he was building these robots to take over the world. So you asked Dan for help, and he...there was a fight, and he and Jarvis were both killed.”

Gold’s voice was soft as he went on, like he was trying to make up for upsetting Ted earlier. “But Dan was the first Blue Beetle, and before he died, he...he asked you to carry on for him. You became the Blue Beetle.”

Ted swallowed, eyes stinging. “The first part...yeah. The second part, no.” He frowned. “Besides, isn’t Blue Beetle some guy in New Mexico somewhere?”

“Texas,” Gold said. “And yeah, Jaime. He’s a good kid. He became Blue Beetle after you.”

“There’s three of us?” Ted asked, forcing a smile. “What, did I die too?”

Gold gave him a look so full of grief Ted actually took a step back. “Oh,” he said. “Well, that sucks.” He sat down at his desk, trying to sort this out. “And this alleged other me, he...I...told you all this?”

Gold nodded. “We were best friends. Inseparable.” He smiled faintly. “We raised a lot of hell. But see, that’s why I know you, Ted,” he said, growing earnest again. “I know that your birthday is November 3rd and that you speak five languages and that you hate dill. I know that you secretly tried smoking your dad’s pipe when you were thirteen and you wound up throwing up and burning a hole in the living room rug. I know that you get infatuated with every pretty girl you see, but you’ve only really been in love twice. I know that you’ve got an undiagnosed chronic heart condition.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, you should get that checked out. I know that you hate the beach and I know that you wish you could stay in the lab all day instead of running the company and I know that you had a poster of Nicola Tesla on your wall as a kid. I _know_ you, Ted.” Booster slumped, clearly frustrated. “I just don’t know _how_ I know you.”

Ted stared at him. “Erdel’s Principle, huh?”

“I’m guessing,” Booster said.

“And how do I know you aren’t just a really thorough stalker and this isn’t all some kind of elaborate hoax?”

“Do you really think I’m that clever?” Booster asked.

Ted couldn’t help it. He laughed. The effect on Booster was remarkable: he absolutely lit up, like he’d accomplished something marvelous. Ted had a sudden, irrational urge to see if he could make Booster smile like that again.

“Okay, so maybe you _do_ know me, from some other timeline or dimension or whatever. I’m not saying I believe you,” he added quickly. “I’m just saying there’s clearly something weird going on.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Booster said. “Just...think about it, okay? That’s all I ask.” Ted had never seen eyes that big and hopeful outside of a Disney cartoon. “And let me know what you decide.”

Ted sighed. “Fine. So how do I get in touch with you? Shine a light shaped like a dollar sign in the sky?”

Booster laughed. He had perfectly matched little dimples on each cheek, Ted noticed. “Well, I’d definitely stop to see what it was if you did that. But I think it’ll be quicker if I give you my number.”

He picked Ted’s phone up off his desk without asking and entered his number, then handed it back to Ted. “I should go,” he said. “We were all supposed to head back to New York after we apprehended the Royal Flush Gang. I’m probably in a lot of trouble.”

“You don’t look too worried,” Ted pointed out.

Booster grinned. “Hey, if I managed to convince you that we might be in the wrong dimension, I should be able to talk my way out of anything.”

Ted couldn’t help grinning back. “Okay, okay, fair. Now get out of here. I have actual work to do.”

Booster nodded and headed for the window. He stepped up on the sill, then looked back. “See you soon, Ted.”

Ted knew Booster Gold was on TV, like, every other day, and knew all about how to pose to best advantage. Still, framed in the window like that, with the pale December sunset behind him, for a moment he looked, so, well, _dashing_ that Ted could only nod in return.

Booster smiled one last time, then let himself drop from the window. A minute later a streak of blue and gold vanished in the distance. Ted watched him go until he realized he was doing it, then made a noise of disgust and sat back down at his computer.

“Ugh. Get it together, Kord,” he said, his monitor back on. “He could still be crazy.”

A new message dinged on his computer. _/Hey, Beeb./_

_/Hi Barb. What’s up?/_ Barbara, or Rollingthunder, as her handle went, was an internet buddy Ted had befriended a couple of years ago after watching her beautiful takedown of a bunch of idiots on a tech forum. He’d never met her in person, and even their online talks had grown less frequent over the past few months, since Barbara hadn’t been around much lately, but she was smart and funny and he enjoyed chatting with her. After he’d broken up with Melody – okay, after Melody had dumped his ass, and rightly so – he’d considered trying to arrange a meet-up with Barbara, who he thought was around his age, but he’d never quite worked up the guts.

_/Not much. Tired. I had a late night. You?/_

Oh, nothing much. Just a ridiculously good-looking superhero informing him that they’d been best friends in another dimension. Where Ted had _died._ _/Just work craziness,/_ he said instead. He drummed his fingers on the space bar, thinking. _/You ever wonder what it’s like to be a superhero?/_

 

He clicked over to his email, where there was a furious chain of emails from one of their major customers, who’d ordered two hundred KORD, Inc. computers and wound up, inexplicably, with a case of rancid floor wax instead. It took him half an hour to put that fire out, and it was only when he was done that he realized Barbara had never answered him. _/Barb? You still there?/_

_/Sorry, yeah. Nope, never thought about being a superhero./_ And then, a minute later, _/What brought this on?/_

Ted sighed, glancing over his shoulder at the window and the now-dark sky beyond it. _/You wouldn’t believe me if I told you./_

*

“I’m glad you called,” Booster said as Ted took the seat across from him in the coffee shop.

Ted leveled a finger at him. “I’m still not saying I believe you. But I’m a scientist, and a scientist hears all evidence with an open mind.”

Booster grinned. “You’re saying you’re _not_ just hoping I’m right because it means that time travel and interdimensional communication are possible and you like anything that makes life more like _Space Trek?_ ”

“No, I’m not,” Ted said haughtily. “Ask me again when you’re a hot blue chick with a ray gun from the planet Amazonia.”

“Hey,” Booster said, “with infinite dimensions, anything’s possible.” He took a sip of his drink, then pointed to Ted’s cup. “Would it help my case if I told you that I know that’s a large black coffee, house blend only because you think flavors get in the way of the caffeine?”

Yes. “No,” Ted said. “You could’ve just heard me order it.”

Booster smiled. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. But if I didn’t...” He let the sentence trail off, eyebrows raised suggestively.

Ted sighed and put his cup down. “Look, the way I see it, there’s three options here. Either you’re trying to scam me, or you’re crazy, or you’re telling the truth.”

“If I’m scamming you, what’s the scam?” Booster asked. “I promise I’m not going to turn around and tell you that you need to hand over ownership of KORD, Inc. to me in order to save the space-time continuum. Well, probably not.”

“If you were scamming me, would you tell me what the scam was?” Ted retorted. Booster had a point – Ted couldn’t quite see how Booster telling him they used to be best friends would benefit Booster. Still, a pigeon never saw a good trap until it was sprung.

“The UN likes me,” Booster pointed out.

“Last I heard, the UN was considering replacing you with that jerky Green Lantern.”

“Gardner? Never. Vixen, maybe, but never Gardner.” Booster sipped his tea again. “Okay, if I’m crazy – which I admit I haven’t ruled out myself – how do I know all this stuff about you?”

That was a hurdle Ted hadn’t worked out yet. “Coincidentally accurate delusions?”

“Do you know what the odds of that are?”

“Hey, with infinite dimensions, anything’s possible,” Ted repeated back at Booster, and Booster laughed.

“Okay, okay, it’s a possibility,” Booster said. He leaned forward. “And if I’m telling the truth?”

Ted looked down at his coffee. He wasn’t built to withstand the earnestness in Booster’s eyes. “That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet.”

*

It _would_ have to be one of those pizzas where every bite you took left strands of cheese trailing from your mouth to the slice. Ted tried to break them discreetly with his finger, but it didn’t matter – Booster was busy watching orange grease drip from the tip of his slice and soak into his paper plate.

“This is disgusting,” Booster said. “I don’t know how you people ever managed to hang on until the 25th century.”

“And _I_ don’t know how you’ve been in this time period for two whole years and you haven’t tried pizza yet,” Ted replied. “It’s nature’s most perfect food!”

Booster picked a slice of pepperoni off his pizza. “What _animal_ is this from?”

“Pig, allegedly,” Ted said. “Just take a bite, would you? Man up already.”

He still didn’t one hundred percent believe that Booster was from another time period, but the baffled and horrified looks Booster was giving the pizza were pretty convincing. Ted was just glad he’d taken pity on the guy and suggested one of the rare New York-style pizzerias in Chicago, blasphemous as it was – he thought deepdish might actually have killed Booster.

Actually, there were a lot of things over the past couple of weeks that had been pretty convincing. He’d had Barbara run every search she was capable of and as far as they could tell, neither Booster Gold nor anyone who could conceivably be connected to him was in the system. He had no social security number, no birth certificate, no school records. There were no news reports mentioning him before his debut two years ago. He had money, but it was in a Mom-and-Pop credit union he’d charmed into giving him an account with no paperwork or credentials. He simply didn’t seem to exist before two years ago.

Almost more convincing, though, was the way they fell together. Booster was fun and got Ted’s sense of humor, even when he didn’t pick up on what was for him dated references. He was smarter than Ted would’ve guessed, and not nearly as much of a jerk as he pretended to be. He could still be crazy or a con artist, but until Ted figured out which he wasn’t bad company.

Ted told himself that figuring out if Booster was telling the truth was the reason he kept inviting Booster to grab a drink or a bite. It wasn’t because he already believed him. And it _definitely_ wasn’t because of how good he looked in that costume, or the way his lips pursed as he tried to steel himself to take his first bite of pizza.

Finally, Booster closed his eyes and took a bite. Ted watched his expression as he chewed, waiting for his reaction.

Booster swallowed, then opened his eyes. “I think my digestive system just committed suicide,” he said.

Ted grinned. “Now you’re a 21st century man! Tomorrow we’ll try fried chicken. Ooh! Or maybe fried _Twinkies_.”

Booster groaned.

*

“What’s this?” Ted asked as Booster handed him a small package wrapped in blue and white paper.

“What does it look like? It’s a present,” Booster said. “Isn’t tonight the first night of Hannukah? Grife, I’m the one who’s not supposed to know the cultural rituals of this time period, not you.”

Ted turned the package over in his hands. It was covered in tape, and the paper was wrinkled and had clearly been torn at least twice. “Thank you. I...I don’t have a present for you.”

Booster shrugged. “I’m an atheist. Go on, open it!”

It took some doing with all that tape, but Ted managed to get the paper off. “Wow, thanks. Um...what is it?”

“It’s a stungun,” Booster said. “See, you hold it like this, and then fire...remember how I told you I was a night watchman in the Space Museum before I came here? This was what we used as a nonlethal deterrent for break-ins. It doesn’t work anymore...” he pulled the trigger to demonstrate “...there’s no power source here that’ll work for it, but I thought you might like to have it anyway, just to, you know, play with future technology. You could take it apart and see how it works, maybe even get it running again. Or you could use it as a paperweight. Or you could just throw it out.” He shuffled his feet. “I know it’s kind of a stupid gift, but I thought...”

“No, no, it’s really cool!” Ted said quickly. The thing in his hand looked kind of like a weird toy, but it didn’t feel like any plastic Ted was familiar with, and the color was a sort of sedate maroon – certainly not the first choice in play weaponry. “This is really from the future? How do you get it open? How does it work?”

Booster shrugged. “Beats me. I was a history major. Want to know about the Revolution of 2314? ...Actually I can’t tell you about that, it could change history.” He bit his lip. “You sure you like it? I can get you something else...”

Ted pulled the gun away from him. “No, I like this. I want to see how it works.” He smiled. “Thanks, Booster. You did this 21st century cultural ritual very well.”

Booster beamed, and for a wild, stupid moment Ted thought Booster was going to kiss him. “Happy Hannukah, Ted.”

*

“But what _is_ a grinch? Is it supposed to be like some kind of mythological monster or an animal or something?”

Ted handed Booster another beer and sat down on the couch next to him. Booster was frowning at the TV, clearly perplexed. “What? No, he’s just, like, a thing. A green furry guy, I don’t know. Typical Dr. Seuss.”

“Who?”

Ted paused in opening his own beer. “You don’t – oh, that’s right. Of course you don’t know.” He twisted the cap off his beer and held it away from him as it foamed up a little. “He’s a children’s book author. Well, he was. He wrote and drew all these great silly little stories, and this is based on one of them.”

“Oh.”

“You could _call_ someone a grinch if they don’t like Christmas or something, but it’s from this book and this movie. It’s not a thing that existed before.”

Booster nodded, satisfied, and sat back. “See, this is why I like you, Ted. Everyone else would look at me weird if I asked them these things.”

“Well, you _are_ weird,” Ted said, and Booster kicked him gently with his socked foot before settling back against the couch.

Ted pondered Booster’s profile for a minute before turning back to the cartoon. Booster didn’t talk much about the whole alternate dimension thing anymore, but some time travel stuff still tripped him up. Ted wondered if he’d had conversations like this with the Other Ted.

He frowned. It was ludicrous, but he couldn’t help it: he was _jealous_ of Other Ted. Other Ted was a superhero. Other Ted had invented an airship. Other Ted had saved Booster’s life. Ted must look pretty pathetic in comparison. Booster’d never said so, but every so often Ted caught a wisp of melancholy in his voice, and wondered if Booster was wishing he was...well, a different him.

At the same time, there was one thing about Other Ted that Ted was dying to know and couldn’t ask Booster. Had the Other Ted felt this too, this attraction, this frustrated, confused affection? Had they been _more_ than friends? Sometimes Booster said something or did something that made him think there’d been something more, but it never materialized into anything concrete, and Ted didn’t have the nerve to ask.

He sipped his beer and tried to focus on the Grinch, who was affixing antlers to his dog. It was funny; somewhere along the way he’d decided to believe Booster. And somehow it was the least of his problems.

*

Ted was on his way to lunch when the bookstore caught his eye. Normally he tuned out any place around work that didn’t offer food, but this bookstore had a big display of collector’s edition copies of _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ in the window, with other, less seasonal Dr. Seuss books clustered around it. Ted contemplated the display, chewing on his lower lip thoughtfully.

Ten minutes later he walked into the sports bar next door, a slim plastic bag dangling from one hand. He waved to the bartender and sat down at his usual spot, ignoring the various TVs tuned to sports and news stations.

“Don’t tell me,” the bartender said. “Burger with the works?”

“Am I that predictable, Joe?” Ted asked.

“Buddy, I could set my watch by you,” Joe replied.

_“...Gold was rushed to the hospital today...”_ the anchorwoman on the nearest TV said faintly.

Ted’s head snapped up. “Turn that up.”

“What?” Joe asked.

“The news!” Ted barked. “Turn it up! Now!”

Looking alarmed, Joe grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. Ted turned back to the screen, heart pounding.

_“...after an altercation with what seems to have been an alien adversary,”_ the newscaster was saying. _“The Justice League was aided in apprehending the alien by Superman, but several Leaguers and passersby were injured. Though there were no fatalities, JLI leader Booster Gold remains in criticial condition at Metropolis General.”_

She moved on to the next story, but Ted was already pulling out his phone and walking out the door, Joe and hamburger forgotten. “Angie? Get me on the next flight to Metropolis, _now._ I don’t care how much it costs, just do it.”

He flagged down the first cab he saw. “O’Hare, and step on it.”

The trip to Metropolis passed in an anxious blur. None of the news sites had any more information about Booster’s condition, though some guy named Jimmy Something had gotten some good pictures of the fight. Still, the dearth of news didn’t keep Ted from fretting even more when he was in the air and couldn’t check the internet.

At the hospital, though, he encountered a roadblock: they wouldn’t let him in.

“Are you family?” the head nurse asked.

“Of course I’m not family, his family’s not even born yet!” Ted snapped.

The head nurse exchanged a glance with an orderly. “Sir, I’m going to need you to remain calm. Right now we’re only letting in approved visitors. If you’re not a family member and don’t have UN clearance, you’ll have to wait until Mr. Gold’s condition stabilizes.”

“What do you mean, stabilizes? What’s wrong with him? How badly is he hurt? I – ”

“Sir, I need you to – ”

“What’s going on here?” a woman asked, coming up to them. She had a faint, lilting accent and a lot of very green hair and it took Ted’s worried, tired brain longer than it should have to connect that with “Fire.” She also had a cast on her wrist and a few scrapes on her face, which didn’t make him feel any better.

“This gentleman would like to see Mr. Gold, Ms. Da Costa,” the head nurse said, “but I told him, only family and UN-approved personnel can go in.”

Fire looked at Ted. “And you are?”

“Ted Kord. I’m...I’m a friend of Booster’s,” Ted said, suddenly feeling a bit silly. How could he explain to these people that he needed to make sure Booster was okay? How could he explain his relationship with Booster without either of them sounding crazy?

Fire’s glance turned appraising. “Oh, so _you’re_ his on-the-side guy. I wouldn’t have figured you for his type, but yeah, I can see it.”

Ted blushed and opened his mouth to correct her, but she was already turning to the head nurse. “Look, he’s fine, okay? Just let him see Booster. I’ll go in with him and make sure he doesn’t try to stab Booster or blow up the hospital or anything.”

The nurse frowned, then nodded. “Fine. But call for an orderly if he makes trouble, okay? I don’t want you rebreaking that wrist.”

“I think I still have enough juice in me to handle a rowdy civilian,” Fire said, raising the pointer finger of her uninjured hand. It burst into green flame. Ted swallowed and nodded quickly.

“Thanks,” he said as they headed down the hall. “Do you know if Booster’s okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Fire assured him. “That nurse was just riding a power trip. Booster’s drained, but he’s awake and everything.” She gave Ted a mischievous smile. “I’m sure he’ll be very happy to see you.”

Ted blushed again. “Look, Ms., uh, Fire, Booster and I aren’t...we’re not...”

“Here we are!” she announced, stopping in front of a closed door. She knocked, then peeked inside. “Booster? Someone’s here to see you.”

She opened the door and Ted followed her in. Booster’s eyes widened when he saw Ted. “Ted? What are you doing here?”

Suddenly Ted felt silly. He’d come all this way when Booster clearly hadn’t expected him to; they were just friends, and Booster was surrounded by beautiful women like Fire every day. “I, uh, I heard you were hurt, and I just...I wanted...”

Booster beamed. He looked pretty haggard, with red marks on his face and arms and a bandage on his temple, but when he smiled like that he looked as beautiful as Ted had ever seen him. “I can’t believe you came all the way from Chicago to see me! Get over here!”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Bea said with a wink. “Remember, you – juice.” She pointed at Ted and flicked a little green fireball from her fingers before slipping out of the room and closing the door.

Still feeling a bit foolish, Ted shuffled over to the bed. “Are you okay?”

Booster rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine, just annoyed. Do you know how much it sucks to have your ass saved by _Superman?_ ”

“You don’t like Superman?” Ted asked. “Is that even allowed?”

“Well, I’m rebellious like that,” Booster said. “Anyway, it was his fault – this alien jerk Mongul was looking for him. And _I’m_ the one who gets Black Mercy to the chest.”

Ted pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. “What’s Black Mercy?”

Booster sighed. “According to the STAR Labs technician who carted it away after they finally got it off me, Black Mercy is ‘a parasitic plant, extraterrestial in origin, with hallucinogenic properties that target the pleasure centers of the brain.’” He poked one of the red marks on his arm. “Basically, it latches on to you and makes you think you’re in an ideal world. That keeps you quiet so it can suck all the nutrients out of you.” He shuddered. “Hence the protein cocktail in that IV. I’m fine, but if I tried to stand right now I’d probably collapse.”

Ted made a face. “That’s horrible. What’d they do, cut if off of you?”

Booster shook his head. “I started to realize that the world it was giving me wasn’t real, and it was easy for Mari to pry it off of me. Especially when she was using her gorilla arms.”

“What kind of world was it giving you?” Ted asked.

Booster paused. “It doesn’t matter. What’s in the bag?”

Ted looked down. He still had the bag from the bookstore in his hand. “Would you believe I’d just finished buying your Christmas present when I saw you were in the hospital?” He handed Booter the bag. “It’s not wrapped.”

Booster pulled the book out of the bag. “ _The Sneetches and Other Stories?_ ”

“It’s by that writer, Dr. Suess,” Ted explained. “You know, he wrote _The Grinch?_ Anyway, I know it’s just a kids’ book, but I saw it and I remembered how you’d never read anything by him, and...I don’t know, the Star-Belly Sneetches kind of remind me of you. Your costume, I mean, not you yourself. They’re kind of jerks.”

Booster smiled. “I’m kind of a jerk, too.”

“No, you’re not,” Ted insisted. “I mean, okay, yes, you are, but you’re the kind of jerk I like.”

“Yeah?” Booster asked. His smile grew soft. “I’m glad.”

Ted wasn’t sure when they’d gotten so close, but suddenly Booster was just inches away, close enough for Ted to count the freckles on his perfect nose. He didn’t know if it was that closeness or Booster’s soft smile or just the adrenaline of being so worried for so long, but common sense abandoned him entirely. He leaned in and kissed Booster, right on the mouth.

Booster hissed a sharp breath in through his nose, a gasp of surprise, and then his hand curled into Ted’s hair and he was kissing Ted back – until he suddenly pushed Ted away, so hard Ted rocked back in his chair. “No,” he said, biting his lip. “I can’t. I...Ted, I _can’t_.”

Ted’s heart dropped through the bottom of his stomach. “I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry, I, I...”

“No, you _don’t_ understand!” Booster said. “Listen, I...” He scrubbed at his face, wincing when he hit the bandage on his temple. “Do you know what I dreamed when the Black Mercy had me? I dreamed of _you_. I dreamed that life was exactly like it is, except I could go home any time I wanted, I wasn’t a disgrace to my family – and I dreamed that you and I, that we were...together. Don’t you understand? The only way I know that this is real, right now, is that I’m still hurting from that stupid plant.”

“Then why...?” Ted asked, voice dwindling as he searched for the words he wanted.

Booster stared at his hands. “I’m starting to forget the old world,” he said. “No, not starting – I barely remember it at all. It’s like a dream I had when I was a kid. But when I realized it was fading, I wrote down everything I could remember, everything important.”

He looked back up at Ted, eyes haunted. “You _died_ in the old world. You...you meant everything to me, and you _died_ , and _that_ was why I became a Time Master. To save you. And I tried, once, and everything went wrong...our friends died and the bad guys took over and it all went to hell. And I would have kept it, Ted. I would have kept it to keep _you_.”

Ted swallowed. He liked Booster a lot – he liked being with him, he’d _definitely_ liked kissing him, for the brief moment he’d done so – but what Booster was saying was a lot to take in.

“You were the one who made the sacrifice,” Booster went on. “You went back and fixed the timeline, even if it meant you had to die. And when I realized you were alive in this universe, I thought, wait and see, wait and see if it all goes bad...”

“But it hasn’t,” Ted pointed out.

“But it still could!” Booster said. “What if this is another kind of Black Mercy? What if it’s a spell, or a delusional time loop, or, or _something?_ My job is to protect the timestream, Ted. What if being with you is keeping me from doing that?”

“So...what?” Ted asked. “You’re saying I have to _die?_ ”

“ _No,_ ” Booster said. Ted had never seen him so serious. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll find a way this time. But I have to at least _know_ what the consequences are.”

“How?” Ted asked.

“I wrote down a name,” Booster said. “I don’t know where he is, but...we have to find Rip Hunter.”

*

It was a couple of weeks before Booster’s injuries mostly faded and Ted declared him fit to go hunting down time travelers. Barbara had worked her magic and found a lab in Metropolis that was registered to a quantum physicist named Ripley Hunter. Ted had spent much of the past two weeks by Booster’s side, so it was a quick trip over to the business center of town, where they found themselves standing in a nondescript hallway in a nondescript building in front of Suite 52. There was a security panel on the wall next to the door, blinking steadily in red.

“So do you remember this guy at all?” Ted asked.

Booster scratched his head. “A bit? More than most stuff, actually. Mostly I remember him yelling at me.” He made a face. “I hope I didn’t break the old universe. He’ll be _pissed_.” Ted laughed. “I was serious.”

“Oh.”

Booster took a deep breath, then knocked on the door. There was no response. “Rip?” he called. “Rip Hunter? It’s Booster Gold.”

_“Voice recognition confirmed,”_ said an electronic voice from the door panel. “Welcome, Mr. Carter.”

Booster frowned at the door. “How did he know my real...?”

The door swung open. Ted and Booster glanced at each other, and Booster squeezed Ted’s hand. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he promised. “I’d die first.”

Well, Ted _had_ to kiss him then. “Let’s look for options that involve neither of us dying, okay?”

Booster nodded, and they stepped inside. “Rip?” Booster called.

It didn’t take long to see that the lab was empty. No, Ted amended, it didn’t have any _people_ in it besides Ted and Booster. It was most certainly _not_ empty. The room was ringed with gleaming silver filing cabinets, except for one wall, which was hung with tools, all neatly organized – nothing like any lab _Ted_ had ever had, that was for sure. There were several work tables, some of which boasted computer equipment Ted was pretty sure wasn’t available on the commercial market yet, and a couple of in-progress projects scattered about. A chalkboard stood near the main computer with a few notes scrawled on it, like “Who else remembers?” and “Count the Robins!” and “Canadian???”

In the center of the room was a half-finished glass sphere with some kind of machinery inside it. Booster walked up to it and gave it a gentle poke. “Looks like he’s already working on the Time Sphere.”

Ted raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that thing’s a time machine?”

“Well, it will be,” Booster said. “I wonder where Rip went?”

Ted scanned the room again – and paused. “Wherever he went, it was just a minute ago,” he said, and pointed to a still-steaming cup of tea sitting next to an open notebook on one of the work tables.

Booster frowned and walked over to the notebook. “Hey, Ted, take a look at this.”

Ted joined him. Booster pointed about halfway down the page. “It looks like Rip was working less on time travel and more on cross-dimensional theory. Maybe that’s why the Time Sphere’s not done.”

Ted flipped ahead a few pages. “I’m not sure it was just theory,” he said. “It looks like he was actually trying to build something that would let him travel to other dimensions. See, here’s a plan, and...” He looked up. Lying on the other side of the still-steaming teacup was a gadget that matched the one in Rip’s diagram. “I think that’s it. Let me...”

He reached for it just as Booster put a hand on his shoulder. “Ted, I’m not sure you should...”

>>>The gadget suddenly looked wrong – too small, and blurry. Ted tried to blink and found that he couldn’t. Concerned, he tried to bring the gadget closer to his face – but something was holding onto it, something with long, blue, monstrous claws.

“Gah!” he shouted, and tried to back away, but the claws followed him. His body wouldn’t work properly, either – his legs felt strange, and almost like there were...too many of them?

“Booster?” he called, hoping he didn’t sound panicked. But it was worse – he sounded strange, chittery and metallic, though still recognizable.

“Ted!”

He managed to turn and saw a humanoid figure made of gleaming gold metal crouched in a figting stance, warily circling around him and whatever the monster Ted couldn’t quite see was.

“Ted? Where are you?” he heard Booster say.

“I’m right here!” Ted said. “There’s a weird gold robot and some kind of blue monster thing. How are you missing this?”

“Blue monster...Ted?” The gold figure stopped circling and straightened up, and Ted realized belatedly that Booster’s voice was coming from it.

“Booster? What happened to you?”

“I think a better question is, what happened to _you?_ ” Booster asked. “Have you seen yourself?”

The question was so patently ridiculous that Ted had to roll his eyes – and found, to his horror, that he couldn’t do _that_ , either. “Wait. Booster, what’s happened to me?”

Booster looked down at himself. “Weird,” he muttered. “Can you see your reflection in me?”

Ted scurried closer, wondering why that felt like the right word to use, and peered at his reflection in Booster’s broad chest. It was hard to see with the flexing gold metal and his eyes still not working properly, but he didn’t see anything that looked like his face – just a giant blue bug monster holding the gadget from Rip’s lab.

Holding the gadget from Rip’s lab...

“ _Gah!_ ” he yelled again, louder and more horrified this time. “Shit! Holy _shit!_ What _happened_ to me?”

“Ted! Ted, calm down,” Booster said, putting a hand on his...his carapace, or something. It was strangely warm, and something primal in Ted felt soothed by it. “I think the thing you’re holding is, like, a dimensional, I don’t know, shunter or something. I think that’s where Rip went.”

“Well, if he’s here, find him and tell him to fix this!” Ted snapped. “I don’t want to be a giant _bug_ for the rest of my life!”

“I don’t think he can. You’re holding the shunter,” Booster pointed out. “You must have pressed something that skipped us over a dimension.”

Ted handed him the shunter. “Well, you try it. I don’t even really have fingers now. Just these claw things.”

Booster took the shunter. “You’d better hold on to me,” he said, and didn’t shudder when Ted rested a claw on his shoulder. “Okay, this looks like something. Here we – ”

>>>“I reckon that did it,” Booster said. “You’re human again, pardner.” He paused. “That _is_ you under there, isn’t it?”

Ted looked down at his hands, which were pink and fleshy and scarred and familiar. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “What do you mean, under there?” His head felt hot, his vision tinted yellow. He reached up, encountered leather, and tugged whatever it was off his head.

“Well, that is a relief and no mistake,” Booster said, smiling at him. “I’m sure you were right handsome, as critters go, but I surely do prefer you human.”

Ted looked up from the weird blue leather cap in his hands, with yellow goggles and some kind of antennae. “Why in tarnation are you talking like that?” he asked, then paused. “Why in tarnation am _I_ talking like that?”

They looked around. They were definitely somewhere in the Southwest, the landscape gold and red and flat all around them. There was a small, rickety-looking wooden town in the distance. “This must be some sort of cowboy dimension,” Booster said.

“A _cowboy_ dimension?” Ted repeated.

“You got any better notion?” Booster asked.

Ted shook his head. “No. Give that thing here, would you?” He took the shunter. “So you just pressed here and – ”

>>>“Mr. Kord, thank you so much for letting me keep the Scarab. I just know I can use it to become a hero like Booster,” the teenage boy in front of him said.

“Uh...no problem?” Ted said. He had no idea who this kid was, but for some reason the idea of being mean to him was like stepping on a kitten. He glanced at Booster, who shrugged.

“Uh, would you excuse us for a second, kid?” Booster asked. The boy nodded, and Booster pulled Ted out of the room.

“Rip can’t have gone far,” he said. “I say we just keep clicking this thing until we find him.”

Ted nodded and reached for the button. “Just as long as I don’t wind up a bug ag – ”

>>>“Mr. Gold, you are a charlatan and cad, and I would no sooner trust you to protect the citizenry of this fine metropolis from vampires than the vampires themselves.”

Booster blinked and turned to Ted. “What do you know?” he muttered. “Superman’s a dick in _every_ universe!”

Ted shook his head and clicked the shunter.

>>>“Sir Michael of the Gold!” It was the same teenage boy from two universes ago, this time in a blue tunic with a stylized insect on it. “Your skills with the blade and my lord’s alchemical wizardry are sorely needed in battle!”

Click.

>>>“Blue Beetle, thank God you’re here,” said a white-haired man who looked strangely familiar. “I’m assembling the other Action Heroes and you’re the only one who knows how to find the Question.”

>>>“Blue Beagle! Rooster Gold! Come on! Captain Carrot’s calling up all the reserves to fight the terrible Per Dogaton!”

>>>“Traning gorillas to fight your battles? Is there any low you Ratzis won’t sink to?”

>>>“Outrageous!”

Click.

Click.

Click.

>>>Ted sagged against Booster, who, like Ted, was dressed as a pirate. Even though their journey hadn’t been physically taxing, except for one universe where they’d had to flee from dinosaurs, he was somehow exhausted. “How many more universes can there be?”

“Fifty-two.”

“What?”

Booster frowned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve been counting. Including where we started, I think we’ve been through 51. And there are only 52, I’m sure of it.”

Ted raised an eyebrow. “That seems like a kind of arbitrary number.”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules. Rip does.”

“Well, I wish that rule would include being in the first universe we looked.” Ted sighed. “Okay, here goes nothing.”

Click.

>>>Ted looked around. He was in what seemed to be some kind of spaceship, but somehow he got the impression of utter vastness, like where he was was bigger than any spaceship could possibly be. And he was alone.

“Booster?” he called, turning around. “Booster!”

“Papa, Papa!”

Ted turned. A little boy, maybe about three years old, was running full-tilt towards him. Ted scooped him up instinctively to keep the boy from crashing into his legs. “Papa, Papa, you’re here! I knew you’d come!” the boy said. “I got lost and you always said to go to Vanishing Point if I was lost and you’d come get me, and I did and you came!”

Ted frowned. The boy was blond and blue-eyed and naggingly familiar, but definitely not his son. “Sorry, kiddo, I’m not your papa. Maybe we can find him, though.”

The boy blinked and looked closer at Ted. “Ohhhh,” he said, as if understanding had dawned. Then he giggled. “Oops! I almost told.”

Ted had a feeling there was something more going on here than he realized, but right now he needed to find this kid’s parents first – and Booster. “Listen, have you seen anyone else here? Another grownup, with yellow hair like yours, probably in a shiny blue and gold suit?”

“You mean Da – Booster Gold?” the little boy said. “He’ll come here. He knows how to get to Vanishing Point.”

“Kid, I don’t think you understand...” Ted started to say.

“Ted?”

He turned. Booster was standing at the other end of the hall, in a variation on his costume – simple shapes of blue and gold, with no little detailed lines.

“There you are!” Ted said. “How’d we get separated?”

“Oh my God. Ted!” Booster cried, and leapt into the air, flying at full speed towards Ted and the little boy and wrapping them both up in a crushing hug.

“Too tight!” the boy protested.

Booster pulled back, and Ted saw with a start that he looked older, a good ten or fifteen years old than the Booster he knew. “What brought that on?” he asked.

Booster shook his head, and Ted realized that there were tears in his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, brushing a thumb against Ted’s cheekbone. “I just feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”

“Ew, mushy stuff!” the boy complained.

Booster blinked. “And who is – _Rip?_ ”

Ted stared. “ _This_ is Rip Hunter? He’s three years old!”

“Three and a _half_ ,” Rip corrected him haughtily. “And only in this dimension. Did you bring my Slidestep?”

“What is that, a dance move?” Ted asked.

Rip rolled his eyes, impatient as only a small child could be. “ _No._ That.” He pointed to the device in Ted’s hand.

Ted held it up so that Rip could see it. “Good, it works,” Rip said. “Well, of course it does. I’m a genius.” Ted bit back a laugh. “Okay. Let’s go home.”

>>>Ted suddenly found himself holding a man a little taller and broader than him, and hastily put him down before he dropped him. “Uh. Dr. Hunter?”

Rip smiled. There was something familiar about his dimples, but Ted couldn’t place it. “Dr. Kord. So good to meet you. I’ve been a lifelong admirer of your work.”

Ted shook the proferred hand, brow furrowing. “Aren’t you my age? What’d you do, follow me on the science fair circuit?”

“Don’t even bother asking,” Booster said. “If there’s one thing Rip loves more than science, it’s secrets. Trying to figure out when he’s from will just give you a headache.”

Rip turned to Booster, and they sized each other up. “You remember too?” Rip asked.

“A bit,” Booster said. “It’s fading.”

“It’s because you were a Time Master,” Rip said. “The more you’ve been exposed to quantum travel, the longer you remember. If I wasn’t working, it’d start fading for me, too.”

“So what happened?” Booster asked. “Tell me this wasn’t my fault.”

Rip raised an eyebrow. There was something familiar about that gesture too, so much so that Ted wondered if he’d met Rip sometime before. Maybe when he was a kid? If Rip was a time traveler, it could have happened any time. “For once, no,” Rip said. “This was the Architects’ doing. I tried asking them why, but, well, you know how they can be.” He paused. “Well, no, I guess you don’t.”

Booster grabbed his arm. “So this wasn’t something a villain did? It’s not a mistake? I don’t have to fix it?”

Rip glanced from Booster to Ted and then back. His expression softened slightly. “As far as I can tell, no. Things are the way they’re supposed to be.”

Ted hadn’t realized how much Booster had been worrying until he saw the tension leaving Booster’s frame. “Oh, thank God.”

“Thank the Architects,” Rip corrected him. He took the shunter – the Slidestep – from Ted. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to put some failsafes on this thing before I get stuck as a toddler at Vanishing Point again.”

“I _do_ mind, actually,” Ted said. “I still have a lot of questions. _Why_ did everything change like that? What’s Vanishing Point? Who are these Architect people?”

Booster shook his head. “He’s not going to tell you, Ted. Come on, let’s go before he sends me back in time to save FDR or something.”

He started pulling Ted towards the door. Rip smiled. “Don’t worry, Ted. You’ll be seeing plenty of me in the future. Trust me.”

Ted frowned, but let Booster pull him out of the lab. The door swung closed, and they heard the lock click into place. “That guy’s a jerk,” Ted said.

Booster kissed him.

“What was that for?” Ted asked. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

Booster grinned. “That was because everything’s okay. That was because we went to 52 universes together today, and I’m going to take you home and kiss you for every single one of them.”

Ted couldn’t help smiling back. “Even the giant bug one?”

“ _Especially_ the giant bug one,” Booster said. “You were a very sexy giant bug, as giant bugs go.”

Ted raised his eyebrows. “Is this a fetish of yours? Should I be concerned?”

Booster laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re my only fetish. Promise.”

The heat in his eyes made Ted shiver. They hadn’t progressed much further than kissing, due to both Booster’s delicate condition and the uncertain nature of the timeline, but Ted was very interested in doing more in Booster’s bed than just sleeping. “Okay,” he said, “but if you make any cracks about antennae, you’re sleeping on the couch.”

Booster shook his head. “I dunno, Ted. If you outlaw bad jokes in bed, we might _both_ end up sleeping on the couch.”

“ _All_ my jokes are good,” Ted said, mock-offended.

“If you two don’t stop making goo-goo eyes at each other outside my door, I’m turning the hose on you!” Rip called from inside the lab.

They both jumped, then laughed. “I think we’re disturbing the timesteam,” Booster said.

Ted beamed up at him. “We can’t have that,” he said, and slipped his hand into Booster’s. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

And they did.


End file.
